Obama noted that Medvedev had opened a
Twitter account while visiting the
company's headquarters in California.

"I have one, as well, so we may be
able to finally throw away those red
phones that have been sitting around
for so long," he said to laughter,
referring to the Cold War-era direct
hotline between U.S. and Kremlin
leaders.

Contrary to popular myth and Hollywood
portrayal, the hot line has never been
a pair of red telephones, one in a
drawer in the Oval Office, the other
in the Kremlin.

At first it was a set
of teletypes with messages punched in
at a rate of about one page every
three minutes. That system was
replaced in the late 1970s with two
satellite systems, as well as an
undersea cable link.

@Lagerbaer: That link syntax does not work for comments. Instead, use [text](link) to hyperlink text in comments. I fixed your comment above to display like you intended.
– Borror0Jun 3 '11 at 22:21

2

the "phone" you show for Carter is an obvious fake. Looks like a block of wood crudely shaped into something resembling an old model telphone and painted red.
– jwentingJun 8 '11 at 13:28

3

"Yeah, it's obviously wood-shopped, I can tell from the splinters." :-) I simply do not agree with @jwenting that it is obviously faked. And surely anyone going to fake it would simply get a real-live off-the-shelf phone and fake its provenance, rather than putting a wooden item on display that any visitor could "obviously" see, and could be proven in 3 seconds by picking up the receiver. (Am I missing the irony? Is there a hook in my cheek?)
– Oddthinking♦Jun 10 '11 at 23:49

6

If you wanted to call the Soviets, what else would you use but the Red Phone?
– SimonNov 15 '11 at 17:08

2 Answers
2

I did some research about the Washington-Moscow Hotline and I can also say that there was NEVER a phone on that link. People who worked at the Hotline until as late as 2008 confirm in interviews that the hotline never had a voice capability. The Hotline first used teletype equipment, since 1988 facsimile units and since 2008 the messages are exchanged by e-mail.

The red phone of Jimmy Carter is not fake, but was used for a different purpose. It was most likely used as part of the Defense Red Switch Network, linking the president, the secretary of defense and all the major command centers. So not for international, but for internal use, that is the chain of command for the US defense system.

From the very same Wikipedia article that you cite, the discrepancy is made clear:

The first generation of the hot line had no voice element at all; the memorandum called for a full-time duplex wire telegraph circuit, based on the idea that spontaneous verbal communications could lead to miscommunications and misperceptions.

In September 1971, it was decided to upgrade the system with better technology. [...] A phone was installed, and the main telegraph line was complemented by two new satellite communication lines, one formed by two US Intelsat satellites and the other composed of two Soviet Molniya II satellites. This phase of upgrade lasted from 1971–1978, and in the process the Washington-Tangier-Moscow radio line was eliminated. [...]

For reference, Jimmy Carter was president 1977–1981, overlapping the late stages of the implementation.

I'm not sure how reliable Wiki is in this case, since they also have that (fake?) picture of Jimmy Carter's phone (according to the description it's from the "Jimmy Carter Library and Museum")
– Oliver_CJun 9 '11 at 23:23